The following article contains slight spoilers for the ending of Twisters...
We know the standalone sequel Twisters has a star-studded cast led by Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones, Top Gun: Maverick’s Glen Powell, and In the Heights’ Anthony Ramos. But, there’s one more character in the disaster flick that deserves some praise too: Tyler’s wind-resistance truck. Now, a real-life scientist who worked on Lee Isaac Chung’s movie explained how Tyler’s truck withstood those multiple tornadoes.
Glen Powell’s character Tyler in Twisters is described as “a redneck with a YouTube channel” who is first perceived as a storm chaser for the sake of shock value. The Arkansas YouTuber may not have the money to own a StormPar van like his competitors Kate and Javi do. However, he’s got a Dodge Ram truck with a ton of cool features to withstand any tornado -- including screw-like anchors that will keep his truck from blowing away.
As much as we love the 1996 high-grossing movie Twister, you have to admit that there were a lot of things about the tornado movie that didn’t make sense. It’s clear that when it comes to the science in it, it's more Hollywood than real, actual science. That’s where Sean Waugh comes in. He's a research scientist at the National Severe Storm Laboratory (NSSL). During his work for Twisters, he explained to Variety the realism of Tyler’s truck, and how storm chasers truly have launched instruments into tornadoes for research:
We’ve done similar-type projects. Not necessarily driving into the tornado, but we’ve tried to get near it. Nobody has shot fireworks into a tornado, at least not that I’ve seen. But give it a year, I guarantee you somebody does it… The firework thing was for the movie, to hype Tyler’s character and that drive for attention.
It did look incredibly cool to see the scenes when fireworks propelled out of the truck into the cyclone. However, that is movie magic for you, not necessarily real science.
Now, while the fireworks are fun, the trick to having a truck withstand the powerful forces of tornadoes is through the welded steel exoskeleton tied to the frame to prevent the tough car from getting crushed while rolling away. Tyler explains in the movie that his truck has an extra weight between the exoskeleton and the frame grill to take in the impact of the lighter debris coming from the first few cyclones.
The biggest test of Tyler’s truck comes towards Twisters’ ending when Kate takes the well-equipped truck inside of a tornado to see if she can stop it from destroying a small town. The rods drilled into the ground to keep the truck in place until the power of the tornado ultimately flipped it. Sean Waugh weighed in on how much that truck would be able to handle in that real-life scenario, saying:
There’s debris everywhere, and that’s the real danger with strong, high winds that even Tyler’s truck can’t withstand. Exoskeleton isn’t armor plating it’s not going to stop those pieces of debris that can absolutely go through car doors and everywhere. You could probably get away with maybe 120-130 MPH. Anything above that — and this goes for any car — once you start getting wind underneath it, you’re going to start changing the aerodynamics of the vehicle. That’s when you start running into problems like tipping, rolling or flying. I don’t care how much armor plating you have, you get hit with a tree, it’s going to start causing problems.
It’s true that even a heavily equipped car drilled into the ground probably can’t withstand heavy winds that are well over 100 MPH. This must be especially true if you’re literally inside of a tornado. But at least at the end of the movie, it realistically showed that the truck wasn’t capable of staying in place for too much longer and did the best it could. The research scientist gave his take on what he would do with a Dodge Ram heading into a tornado:
If I were driving that into the real world, I’d be adding some additional panels, more armor plating and I’d replace the windows with something a bit stronger or cover over them to keep the debris and rocks from breaking out your windows.
According to research scientist Sean Waugh, who worked on Twisters, Tyler’s truck was able to hold its own against tornadoes with the steel exoskeleton and the extra weight tied to the frame to keep the car tough and handle any debris thrown. However, it couldn't have made it through everything in the movie. Just remember Waugh's advice that a real-life storm-chasing truck should feature panels, armored plating, and stronger windows to handle anything that’s coming.
Twisters recently premiered on the 2024 movie schedule, and you can catch Tyler's truck in action by checking the film out in theaters now.
